A love of words
by SarahBelle
Summary: He had no need of eloquence in his role until all favoured another man. He had no love of words, until he needed them to assault the heart of she who adored them above all else. They had no wish for anyone until they began to talk with each other. Den/Fin
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own any part of LOTR.**

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So. Anyone who has read my story 'Flowers of the citadel', in its various forms, will certainly know about my liking for the family of the Steward, and for Denethor himself. I can't help it; there's something about that dysfunctional unit that tugs at my heart strings.

_**It tugs, I tell you.**_

**However, I don't know whether I'm sorry or not to say that 'Flowers' has hit a dead end. I simply can't make it work any longer. I can't escape the fact that my original character simply doesn't work as well as I thought that she could. I've been writing her since 2005, and she's still as much a Mary-Sue as ever, despite my attempts to make her misanthropic and generally unappealing, and therefore real. I've thought long and hard, and she had to go. So she did. **

**Bye bye, Nienor. We hardly knew thee. (Seriously; we never even made it to the end of Book One!)**

**However!...again. I have not given up my goal to write and actually complete a story about Denethor and what counts for his emotional side, and this idea has been rolling around in what counts for my mind for quite a while. If I couldn't give him a daughter, I reasoned to myself, then I could at least find out who his wife was, and what made her tick. What exactly was behind that beautiful face, and in that gentle heart? Don't worry, my faithful readers; Finduilas will **_**not**_** be Nienor repackaged and resold as a supposedly different product. She is her own woman, not the woman that I originally imagined as her third child.**

**So, an attempt at a love story that won't have any love in it for a long time, between two not very sociable, relatively quiet people, who have trouble with the unknown. And a whole lot about words. Because words can do more than hurt you. Used rightly, they can make, shake or break the world. **

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He carries the words upon his shoulders, and it is as if they are piled so high that they could form a crown to his head if only they could be seen as well as heard. They say such things about him, and perhaps they mean for him to hear them and perhaps they do not. It is not even what they say, so much as what they do not say, or what is absent and present in their words.

So there is the pride in his father's words and the admiration in the gossip of the ladies of the court and the love, the _love_, in the voices of the men, of those who should be his men but who belong to another now. There is the praise of the citadel, of the city, of what seems to be the whole of the realm of Gondor, all for one man. And what is there left for him? What is there left?

What is there?

He says nothing. What can he say? There are no words for this, no words that will rectify this, no words that will change this injustice. He will not be the one to protest. If he has not the skill to make those who should love him do so, then how would he win their love back to himself? If they could so easily change their hearts, then their loyalty means nothing. They are worth nothing. How easy it is for the words of the people to change, to coil upon themselves and become something new, and then to bite!

He must satisfy himself with keeping deep the knowledge that there is one - if only one - that does not love that man, that Thorongil, and has never loved him from when their eyes first met. And he will never speak of it. Never. What would he say? He has no gift with speech. He never has.

The words weigh down upon him, and he can find none of his own.

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She carries the words at her waist, as so many young ladies of the city do, and she sits in quiet places and reads from her book of the day, or days if it is a good work. She prefers those that she reads to those that she hears; she knows always what they will do, what they will lead to. They will never deceive her, they will surprise her but they will never take the ground from beneath her feet. They will never lie to her or become something else.

She loves the taste of them, to hold them in her mouth and savour them even as she releases them into the world. She could shape them again and again with her lips and whisper them in her mind, behind her eyes as she looks at things she does not see. Her favourites she will say and never tire of, ocean, blossom, spirit, conceive, child, escape. She likes the hiss and the breath, the sigh as they are sounded and said.

Words from the mouths of others she does not like so much. When she says the words they are good, but when others say them they can be wrong, harsh, limpid, insipid. When they are whispered they irritate her, when they are shouted they alarm her. And when she speaks words, to herself and only herself and for her own pleasure, people stare at her, and when she does not see them they sigh and whisper, whisper.

Of all those around her she likes the words of her family best, for she always knows what they will say, and they need to say nothing. As for the rest, she listens to those she deems worthy and turns away from those she does not.

How hard it is for the words to come! Why is it so easy for her to speak those that others write, again and again, and yet when she tries to speak her own they leave her?

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**Reviews for the half Irish seamstress!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own LOTR.**

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He goes into his rooms and closes the door and almost thinks to lock it before he catches himself. What does he have to keep out? This is where no one may come, where none dare to come. There should be no visions of Thorongil working and worming his way into even this part of his home. He is secure here, he is safe, and here he may stay until the morrow.

And it is only when he has divested himself of his cloak and one of his boots that he recalls, with some guilty dismay, that he had promised his lady mother that he would attend her this night, and sit and talk with her for a time. He does not wish to go to her, he does not desire to spend the hours that might be his alone in the company of any other, even his mother; but alas, he has promised and he cannot go back on his word. And so he pulls his boot back on and sets his cloak once more about his shoulders, and he makes his way to the quarters of the wife of the Steward.

Her ladies are gone, at least, retired to their own beds, and that is a blessing. She holds out her hands to him and she smiles for him as she so rarely does for any other, and he smiles for her and kisses her soft cheek, but as soon as their greetings are done and he is seated on the other side of the fire she begins to question him without pause.

What has he done this day? He did his customary tasks, he went to the council, he did this, he did that. Who has he spoken to? To his men, his soldiers, his subordinates, to some nobles whose names he has already dismissed, to his father and to Thorongil. Where has he been? He has told that already. What have been his tasks? He has told that too, but he will tell it again. What has he accomplished? All the things that he had desired to do. What have others accomplished? That which he desired them to do, or what they desired. What had the Lord Ecthelion spoken of in the council today? Of many things- What had Thorongil said? What did he say? What did others say?

Again and again and again he answers her though he longs to leave, to depart now that he has done his duty and shown his filial love that has lasted for forty and more years, to return to his room and do as he wishes in the short time that he has. Her voice pries and digs into his mind, making him think of what to say when he desires to simply let himself rest. She requires him to speak, and that is hard, because he loves her and he understands why it is that she does this and so he has to give her the answers that she most desires and which will not anger or incense or sadden her. He looks into the flames and he speaks again and again at her command, until at last she ceases and there is silence.

There is silence for so long, in the presence of this woman who always makes noise in some way, that he turns to look at her and finds her looking at him. What is terrible is that this is a time when she does not know what to say to him any longer, she who always knows what to say and, though she does not understand him, not anymore, can bring a response from him, even if it is from duty. He cannot bear it, and so he rises and crosses to her and takes her hand and kisses it, and bids her good night.

Her fingers turn and her nails grasp and she pulls his hands down to her breast, his knuckles against where her heart beats. Perhaps she looks for something in his face, but she is disappointed in her search and she lets him go, and bids him only good night, and good dreams. He bids her goodnight and good dreams, and he leaves in relief but also in guilt again for feeling relief.

At last, at last he returns to his chambers, and he bars the door and builds up the fire once more and…and now that he has a chance to rest, he lights a lamp instead and reads by its light. It is not a book he truly desired to read, but it is something out of the store that he keeps here and cannot be deprived of. After a time he leaves the book upon his bed and goes to look down at the city. Every light is for a person, or perhaps more than one. He looks at the city and he thinks of the people in it and what they are doing and who they are talking to. He thinks that Thorongil might be out there, talking to more and more men, his words and their words about him reaching further and further…

Come, it does no good to think in such a way. He must act, he must not stay in his chambers but go out and drink with his men more, he must win them back and keep them though he knows not how. This is another campaign, with words in the place of weapons, and he must win again.

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She walks into her father's study where he secrets himself at times and occasions such as these; he is already there and looks up from his tome to smile at her. She smiles in return as she chooses for herself and sits down by the fire place, and one of the dogs – in the light of the fire she is not quite sure which one it is, but it is most likely Ros – comes and lies by her and makes a good bolster. These are the good times, the evenings when she can sit in her father's presence and know the comfort that only he can give her, the knowledge that he expects nothing of her and does not question her. He does not care what she wears or if she walks out with parties of companions or how many or how few she speaks to. His love for her makes him a shelter she can go to and hide in. She is his child that has never truly grown; in his eyes she might be the little girl he carried upon his shoulders and held the hands of to let her fly in the air. They can read to each other or enjoy the silence that they make. She loves him because she does not need to do anything to please him or hold him to her.

But a step and she stops and hopes that the step will go on and pass them by, but it does not for her mother must have followed her and seen her entrance into the room. The door is pushed open and she makes herself smaller and looks over the top of the book and into the fire, but even with the nose of Ros in her ear she can still hear the questions and she is conjured to answer. She loves her mother, but she comes very near to hatred when she knows that this torture is done not out of anger but from yet more love. Hate for her and hate left aplenty for the princess.

She is sorry, mother. She did not feel a need to stay at the gathering, she did not know many of the people in the hall. Yes, mother. She knows, mother. Yes, mother. She does not mean to sound meek, mother.

Her father speaks up now in her defence and his protest is a shield the sharp arrows sink into, and she is glad that the questions are not clawing words from her, but she feels guilt that he now has to brave the questions and that she is glad at all that her mother no longer talks to her but talks only of her, for her mother knows that only then will she listen without shrinking.

The prince is worried. He loves his elder daughter in but she is far closer to her mother, and his affection for his son and heir is tempered with exasperation at his antics and behaviour. His middle child, the one most like him and most obedient and sharing in his interests, he cherishes and he worries at the very thought of parting from her. Ivriniel was six and twenty when she married.

But Ivriniel had been courted for two years before that, and had three plying for a suit and many admirers before that. And what does their second daughter have? Already she is one and twenty but she has but few close friends and no man has asked after her to her face and they cannot accept such an offer. She does not need to marry, of course not, not yet. But she must, she _must_, advance more into the circles of court life.

What good will the solitude of their daughter do for her? the princess asks her husband, and her daughter feels her eyes on her and knows she is speaking to both of them. Only to set her apart from those that she should befriend, to make her scorn the company of those she should cherish. Even if she did not marry she would forever make her way through the world casting off those who would be her dearest allies, who might have more than friendship for her in their hearts if only she could see it. Her evening will come, however long it takes to arrive, and she will face it alone; they cannot be there with her in the twilight of her life. Who will she have then? Who will give comfort to her when she is as old and worn as one of her books?

It is not a good thing, husband, to think that you do not need people.

Very true, very true.

She hears all this, words she does not want to hear because they are true, and a hand is upon her shoulder and her mother asks her will she try? Do try, my love, little jujube. They love her, of course she knows that, that is why it hurts so. When she disappoints them and they say so it is as if their words wrap around her throat and do their best to strangle her. She could die choking on their sorrow and reproaches and scolding. She promises. She will go to bed now, she feels weary.

She kisses them both good night and they call out sweet dreams to her as she passes through the door and Ros noses after her. She will read in bed and none will come to bother her there, though she be tired in the morning.

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End file.
